The present invention relates to a method for line-of-sight-independent data transmission from a transmitter to a receiver in a car-to-car or a car-to-infrastructure communication system. The present invention also relates to a system for line-of-sight-independent data transmission.
The following discussion of related art is provided to assist the reader in understanding the advantages of the invention, and is not to be construed as an admission that this related art is prior art to this invention.
Car-to-X (car-to-car and/or car-to-infrastructure) communication services for use in future road vehicles are known in the art. These communication services allow the exchange of data and information between motor vehicles and between motor vehicles and traffic installations. The communication standard is standardized in IEEE 802.11p. The communication among vehicles and between vehicles and infrastructure should be mainly employed to alert following, oncoming and merging traffic to dangerous situations. A possible scenario is, for example, to alert road users of fast moving emergency vehicles with flashing blue light, to prevent possible collisions at traffic light when the emergency vehicle crosses at a red light.
Because communication with the IEEE 802.11p standard takes place at comparatively high frequencies of typically 5.8 GHz, so-called line-of-sight propagation is required for data exchange. This means that in many situations direct visual contact between the transmitter and receiver of the information must be established. If the direct visual contact is limited, for example due to buildings, communication is inadequate or may not be possible at all.
It would therefore be desirable and advantageous to obviate prior art shortcomings and to provide an improved, easily implementable method and a cost-effective and low-maintenance system for line-of-sight-independent data transmission from a transmitter to a receiver in road traffic.